Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri is the mastermind behind the National Moderation bloc's presidential initiative.

"I was behind this initiative," Berri told ad-Diyar newspaper. "How was I accused of obstructing it?"

Three and a half years after hundreds of tons of improperly stored ammonium nitrate ignited at the Beirut port, setting off one of the world's biggest non-nuclear explosions, Lebanese and French officials put forward a plan for reconstruction and reorganization of the port Wednesday.

The Aug. 4, 2020, explosion at Beirut's port killed more than 200 people, injured and displaced thousands and devastated entire neighborhoods of the city.

Speaker Nabih Berri has inched closer to “intersecting” with Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil over the presidential nomination of retired army brigadier general Georges Khoury, a media report said.

The Lebanese and the American mediators agree on many common points regarding the implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said.

Berri told ad-Diyar, in remarks published Wednesday, that there are 13 or 14 articles suggested by the U.S. that Lebanon agrees on. Yet, there are points of disagreements.

The negotiations over a solution in Gaza and south Lebanon are still ongoing and it is not true that they have collapsed, a prominent Lebanese political source has said.

An Israeli drone strike targeted Wednesday a car in southern Lebanon near the coastal city of Tyre, killing a member of the Palestinian militant Hamas group and a civilian.

Hamas said the strike killed Hadi Mustafa, a member of its armed wing in Lebanon from the Palestinian refugee camp of Rashidiyeh.

The Israeli army said Tuesday it hit about 4,500 Hezbollah targets in Lebanon and Syria over the past five months, killing 300 of the group's fighters and wounding more than 750.

The targets were hit from the air and from the ground, the army said in a statement, and included "weapons storage facilities, military structures intended for Hezbollah's offensive activity and operational command and control centres".

Caretaker Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib met Tuesday with Cyprus Foreign Minister Constantinos Kombos in Beirut and discussed the bilateral relations between their countries, the refugee crisis and the border clashes.

In a news conference after their meeting, Kombos encouraged "all parties to engage in a diplomatic dialogue" to "peacefully settle" the Israeli-Lebanese conflict.

Israeli strikes on eastern Lebanon killed one person Tuesday, a security source said, in an escalation of cross-border fire with the powerful Hezbollah movement that has raised fears of spiralling violence.

Since the day after the Israel-Hamas war erupted in October, Hamas ally Hezbollah and Israel have exchanged near-daily fire across Lebanon's southern frontier, but several Israeli strikes have recently hit Hezbollah positions further north.

Ahead of the U.N. Security Council consultations on Resolution 1701 that ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, U.N. Special Coordinator for Lebanon Joanna Wronecka said she discussed with caretaker PM Najib Mikati “the importance of adhering to Security Council resolutions for protecting Lebanon from a broader conflagration.”